Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Anthologies

Karin Slaughter Biography:

Her last name really is Slaughter, and even as a small child, she was fascinated by the macabre. This interest set her apart from most of the other little girls in her small hometown of Jonesboro, Georgia, where her father ran a local car dealership. Karin Slaughter didn’t mind being different, though; even as a child, she was too busy reading to care what other people thought.

Slaughter was different in other obvious ways, too. She was expelled from her Christian primary school for tearing a Bible apart, for instance; and one of her first boyfriends was an undertaker-in-training. She was also influenced by the gruesome events occurring in the world around her. She grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, during a time when Atlanta, located just up the road from Jonesboro, was reeling from a string of child murders. Slaughter says that her carefree childhood was interrupted by the changes brought about by the fear that spread through her community. The experience sparked an interest in how communities respond to crime.

Slaughter is still a Southern girl: she lives in Atlanta and says that stereotypes about the South make her ‘absolutely furious’. She sets most of her books in the South, apparently adhering to the old saw that writers should ‘write what they know’. In fact, one of her popular series of books, known as the Grant County Series, is set in a fictional Georgia town much like the one in which Slaughter grew up.

Karin Slaughter confesses that she’s an avid fan of crime fiction and reads several books every week. She doesn’t read crime fiction when she’s writing, though, choosing to focus on other genres instead. Some of her favorite non-crime fiction authors include Flannery O’Connor, John Steinbeck and Stephen King. One of her favorite books–ever– is Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi. She first read it as a young woman, and is still fascinated by the book’s insight into the inner workings of the Manson family.

Grant County Series:

According to Slaughter, Heartsdale, Georgia, the scene of her Grant County series, is a composite of all the southern towns she knew as a girl. The series begins with Slaughter’s first book, Blindsighted, which involves the experiences of part-time coroner Sara Linton and her ex-husband, Heartsdale Chief of Police Jeffery Tolliver. The book was a huge success, selling well and winning a place on the Crime Writer’s Association’s short list for the ‘Best Thriller Debut of 2001’.

The book’s action begins when a young professor is found dead and gruesomely mutilated. The horror grows as more women are murdered. Blindsighted also introduces Lena Adams, the town’s only female police officer–and the sister of the killer’s first victim. Lena, emotionally involved, favors vigilante justice, and complicates Chief Tolliver’s handling of the case.

Other books in the series continue to follow crimes investigated by Linton, Tolliver and Adams. They include Kisscut, A Faint Cold Fear, Indelible, Faithless, and Beyond Reach. Slaughter has commented that Kisscut was the hardest book she’s ever written because of the darkness of the subject matter.

The Will Trent Series:

Slaughter sticks with Georgia as the setting for the Will Trent Series, but moves the action to the big city of Atlanta, where Will Trent and his partner, Faith Mitchell, explore life’s seamy side as special agents with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Actually, Trent has been familiar with the seamy side since he was abandoned as an infant and raised in the emotionally-impoverished Atlanta Children’s Home. Trent is a man with scars, and his long-term romantic relationship with Angie Polaski is flawed. Still, he’s a good agent, and so is his partner, Faith, who hated him until she was forced to work with him.

Triptych, the first book in the series, features a woman-killer who leaves his calling-card by mutilating his victims in a specific way. Triptych’s characters are complex and flawed, and Slaughter’s unflinching tale of gore can be difficult to get through. As crime author Tess Gerritsen said, Slaughter “takes us to the deep, dark places other novelists don’t dare to go”.

The other books in the series, Fractured and Snatch, continue to develop the characters of Will Trent and Faith Mitchell as they confront chaos perpetrated on citizens of Atlanta by criminals and serial murderers.

Georgia On Her Mind:

The Georgia Series combines the worlds of Grant County and Will Trent. Sara Linton has moved from Heartsdale to the big city and encounters Faith Mitchell–and her partner Will Trent–in the hospital. This series presents the best of two worlds for Slaughter fans. Books in the Georgia series include Fallen, Broken, and Undone.

Slaughter’s Thriller Recipe:

Much has been made of the idea that Karin Slaughter ‘writes like a man’. Her writing is realistic and unsparing, and she goes out of her way to make sure that the details are true to life. Research is the key: Slaughter makes it a practice to read autopsy reports, and when she was writing the Will Trent series, she interviewed female law enforcement officers about their coming-of-age experiences in the 1970’s.

And because she is a native and long-time resident of Georgia, Slaughter’s ear for dialect and feel for place are unflinchingly realistic.

Some reviewers have commented that her books have a political agenda, but Slaughter insists that she doesn’t use her fiction as a forum for ‘preaching’. Instead, she says that any agenda is imposed by the location in which her books are set. Much of her writing is set in the 1970’s, an era when times were changing. In fact, Maynard Jackson was elected the first mayor of Atlanta–a milestone for any Southern city–during this time period.

Television: A New Medium:

Soon Slaughter’s stories will be coming to television. Yellow Bird has acquired the rights to the Will Trent Series, and is planning to produce three films based on the books. Yellow Bird is the Swedish production company that produced television films based on Stieg Larsson’s book, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and its two sequels. Fittingly, Yellow Bird plans to produce the Will Trent films on location in Atlanta.

All Gabriel Allon fans will be eagerly anticipating this one - your favourite spy is back in The New Girl, coming to bookshelves in mid-July. In this one, a girl is kidnapped from an exclusive private school in Switzerland and Gabriel Allon is brought on board to find her. More Details.

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Featured Series

if you are a fan of Jack Reacher you need to read the "Peter Ash" series by Nick Petrie. Endorsed by Lee Child himself, this is a fantastic book series and is the best recommendation I can give for any fans of Reacher. More details.

Featured Author

If you’re a fan of standalone thrillers then be sure to read any of the standalones by Brad Parks. The guy is a master! I’ve read over 50 different authors of standalone thrillers in the last year and no-one stands out like Brad. More Details.

Did You Know…

Writer of novels such as The Tenth Justice and Dead Even, Brad Meltzer is quite the busy man as host of his own television show, and as a comic book writer. His work on Justice League of America earned him an Eisner Award.